Category Archives: Countries

Tariq Ali, Pashtun Nationalism, and Taliban

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban, Terrorism Issue


By Naeem Wardag, Indus Asia Online Journal, December 3, 2008

Since the Afghan War, important power quarters in Pakistan have been propagating a particular interpretation of the security situation in Afghanistan through a variety of means ranging from the vociferous propaganda of the religious right to the more subtle works and ways of the allied experts strategically deployed here and there. Joined the campaign lately have also some ideologues of the liberal left-in particular from Punjab – whose paradigm of the class-struggle fully converge with the “cosmic struggle metaphysics” of the extreme religious right at this point of time as far as their analysis of the problem is concerned. Continue reading Tariq Ali, Pashtun Nationalism, and Taliban →

Down the wrong chimney

Film and Video, Iraq, Teaching Resources


Classroom scene from “Santa Claus in Baghdad.” The book in the professor’s hand is a red velvet volume on Kahlil Gibran, published in 1984. In the film it contains an inscription from the professor’s professor dated 1949. Mixing dates is not the only cinematic sin of this problematic “educational” film.

Last week I received an email as an “educator” about a new, award-winning short feature film called Santa Claus in Baghdad. The announcement came from the filmmaker, an Egyptian named Raouf Zaki, who provided a free preview on a website called vimeo.com. The film is based on a short story of the same name, now part of a series of short stories for young adults by author Elsa Marston. I must admit that I found the title a bit strange, so I decided to look at the preview Tuesday night. But, as the old Christmas song expresses so well, “When, what to my wondering eyes should appear?” A turkey; nothing to give thanks for in battling stereotypes of Iraqis. I realize that the film intended to humanize Arab children, but it tells an emotional “what a great kid” story unrelated to the realities of living in Iraq. Iraqi children, including the thousands who died during Saddam’s regime and during the American occupation, deserve better. Continue reading Down the wrong chimney →

Connecting Histories in Afghanistan

Afghanistan, Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Orientalism


Landowners and Laborers in Kabul from the Burke collection that comprises the first series of photographs relevant to the market region and period of our concern that were taken in the context of the second Anglo-Afghan war. Image courtesy of the the National Army Museum, London.

Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Preface

This book situates nineteenth-century Afghanistan in the context of British Indian colonialism. The general focus is commerce, mainly how local actors including Afghan nomads and Indian bankers responded to state policies regarding popular and lucrative commodities such as fruit and tea. Within those broad commercial concerns, specific attention is given to developments in and between the urban market settings of Kabul, Peshawar, and Qandahar. The colonial political emphasis on Kabul had significant commercial consequences for that city and its economic connections to the two cities it displaced to become the sole capital of the emerging state. The Kabul hypothesis therefore represents a colonial political strategy, and its effects on Kabul-Peshawar and Kabul-Qandahar economic relations are the subject of this book. Continue reading Connecting Histories in Afghanistan →

Art Against Reason

Contemporary Art, Tunisia

M.Y. ART PROSPECTS is pleased to present Against Reason, a solo exhibition by Emna Zghal.

December 11 – January 17, 2009 | Opening Reception December 11, 6-8PM

Against Reason features Zghal’s latest oil paintings with a smaller selection of prints and watercolors. Drawn from lyrical forms found in nature, she uses a wide spectrum of tones and minute strokes to create highly conceptual, abstract pieces. Turning away from contemporary conventions, she rigorously pursues her idiosyncratic themes of abandonment, lostness, and bewilderment.

Zghal is moved by the brilliant colors of a garden, the subdued beauty of a forest, the reflections within moving water. Her work brings to mind the abstractions of Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell, particularly in her use of repetitive, swirling strokes with careful but unstrained release of color. Continue reading Art Against Reason →

In Memoriam Elizabeth Fernea

Anthropology/Sociology, Gender and Sexuality, Iraq, Scholars

Webshaykh’s Note: For the many people whose lives crossed those of BJ Fernea this is a sad note from the University of Texas, where she taught for many years.

It is with great sorrow that we report that Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, passed away on Tuesday afternoon, December 2, 2008, at the home of her daughter, Laila Stroben, in La Canada, California. She is survived by her husband, Robert A. Fernea (Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies), daughters Laura Ann and Laila and son David, and several grandchildren. Continue reading In Memoriam Elizabeth Fernea →

Is the Hummer a Dinger?

Development, Iraq, Iraq War


Hummers are on display at Safa Selmen Menjed’s car dealership in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood. Photo by Ivan Watson, NPR

Test-Driving A Hummer H3, In Baghdad

by Ivan Watson, All Things Considered, December 4, 2008

Security. Militia. Badge. Apache. These are just a few of the English words Iraqis have adopted over the course of a military occupation that has lasted more than five years.

The most common catchphrase of all is Hummer. That’s the word Iraqs now use to describe just about anything military on wheels.

The Hummer has become one of the most ubiquitous symbols of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Continue reading Is the Hummer a Dinger? →

Enough is Enough

Ethics, India, Terrorism Issue

Enough is Enough
Says who to whom?

By Badri Raina, ZNet, November 30, 2008

Epigraph:

The Light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.(Gospel, Matthew, 6:22)

I

My skimpy acquaintance with the Taj hotel in what was then Bombay goes back to 1962.

I had been selected as a rookie sales executive by the then world’s largest corporate house, Standard Oil, whose Asia division was called ESSO.

Our offices, also then the only air-conditioned building in Bombay, was at Nariman point.

Such was the nature of my job that on two or three occasions I had to be inside the Taj, full of smiles and business.

Some three years later I decided I wasn’t going to sell oil for the next forty years, and I quit cold turkey to return happily to an academic life, liberally enlivened with activist involvements.

In short, the Taj hotel is truly a magnificent structure, although those days it made me happier to look at its magnificence from the outside than wheeling-dealing inside.

Like every other Indian, therefore, I am deeply saddened both by the insane loss of life, notable and ordinary, and by the damage done to this edifice. Especially when I recall that the Taj was the result of a laudable anti-colonial impulse, since Jamshedji had been refused entrance to another hotel reserved exclusively for the British. Continue reading Enough is Enough →

Rape in the Iraq War

Gender and Sexuality, Immigration Issues, Iraq, Iraq War, Jordan


Khalida: The mother of two, shown in silhouette, was raped during the war.

Rape’s vast toll in Iraq war remains largely ignored

By Anna Badkhen, The Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 2008 edition

Amman, Jordan – As though recoiling from her own memories, Khalida shrank deeper into her faded armchair with each sentence she told: of how gunmen apparently working for Iraq’s Interior Ministry kidnapped her, beat and raped her; of how they discarded her on a Baghdad sidewalk.

But her suffering did not end when she fled Iraq and became a refugee in Jordan’s capital, Amman. When Khalida’s husband learned that she had been raped, he abandoned her and their two young sons.

Rumors spread fast in Amman; soon, everyone on her block knew that she was without a man in the house. Last month, her Jordanian neighbor barged into her apartment and attempted to rape her. Continue reading Rape in the Iraq War →